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1. INTRODUCTION
The Airborne Internet is a proposed network in which all nodes would be located
in aircraft. The network is intended for use in aviation communications, navigation,
and surveillance (CNS) and would also be useful to businesses, private Internet users,
and government agencies, especially the military. In time of war, for example, an
airborne network might enable military planes to operate without the need for a
communications infrastructure on the ground. Such a network could also allow
civilian planes to continually monitor each other's positions and flight paths.
The concept of the Airborne Internet was first proposed at NASA Langley Research
Center's Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) Planning Conference in 1999.
The goal of the SATS initiative is implementation of small aircraft for public
transportation. In one conference session, it was suggested that such a system would
require a peer-to-peer communication network among the aircraft. The Airborne
Internet Consortium formed subsequently to promote and aid in the development of
such a system. Consortium members include Aerosat, C3D Aero, and United Airlines.
Three different methods have been proposed for putting communication nodes a lot.
The first method would employ manned aircraft, the second method would use
unmanned aircraft, and the third method would use blimps. The nodes would provide
air-to-air, surface-to-air, and surface-to-surface communications. The aircraft or
blimps would fly at altitudes of around 10 mi (16 km), and would cover regions of
about 40 mi (64 mi) in radius. Data transfer rates would be on the order of several
megabits per second, comparable to those of high-speed cable modem connections.
Network users could communicate directly with other users, and indirectly with
conventional Internet users through surface based nodes. Like the Internet, the
Airborne Network would use TCP/IP as the set of protocols for specifying network
addresses and ensuring message packets arrive.
As the chances of plane crashes greatly increased, NASA developed the Airborne
Internet. When people travel, they experience “connectivity down time” in which they
are detached from the wireless networks. The first reason for the development of A.I
is SATS. NASA is creating an infrastructure for fleets of small aircraft. People won’t
have to fly between large cities on jet airliners. Instead, they will be able to fly
themselves right to where they want to go. This would speed up air travel. But, it
would need a major change in air traffic control to be able to manage thousands of
small airplanes filling the skies. That’s where the “Airborne Internet” comes in. This
DIT, Pimpri, Department of Mechanical Engineering Page 2
Airborne Internet: Network in the sky
project is being developed along with the Small Aircraft Transportation System
(SATS). The SATS is studying the possibility of a system of 2- to 10-passenger
airplanes. People could fly these small airplanes to and from small community or
neighborhood airports. Communication is one of the problems that will have to be
fixed. They would be flying to and from small airports are rapidly emerging to help
fill this void. People that travel with laptops or personal digital assistants can obtain
short term network connectivity from a business establishment when they stop for a
break. Airport terminals are becoming popular “hot spots’ for wireless connectivity as
people have time before and between flights to connect to the wireless network. We
design transportation systems to interconnect to complimentary forms of
transportation. But these designs have ignored the information connectivity needs of
the people who use it. The time people spend in transit could be turned into more
productive time if network connectivity were available. This can be accomplished
using the A.I.
The second reason the need for a higher bandwidth. The computer most people use
comes with high speed modem, which means that in an ideal situation the computer
would downstream at a rate depending on the modem. That speed is far too slow to
handle the huge streaming-video and music files that more consumers are demanding
today. That's where the need for bigger bandwidth –broadband -- comes in, allowing a
greater amount of data to flow to and from the computer. Land-based lines are limited
physically in how much data they can deliver because of the diameter of the cable or
phone line. In an airborne Internet, there is no such physical limitation, enabling a
broader capacity.
The Proteus plane will carry the network hub for the HALO Network. HALO
Network uses the Proteus plane, which will carry wireless networking equipment into
the air. The Proteus plane was developed by Scaled Composites. It is designed with
long wings and the low wing loading needed for extended high-altitude flight. Wing
loading is equal to
the entire mass of the plane divided by its wing area. Proteus will fly at heights of 9.5
and 11.4 miles (15.3 and 18.3 km) and cover an area up to 75 miles (120.7 km) in
diameter. The plane still needs to receive approval from the Federal Aviation
Administration.
Airborne-network hub, which is what allows the plane to relay data signals from
ground stations to your workplace and home computer. The airborne-network hub
consists of an antenna array and electronics for wireless communication. The antenna
array creates hundreds of virtual cells, like mobile-phone cells, on the ground to serve
thousands of users. The payload is liquid-cooled and operates off of about 20
kilowatts of DC power. An 18-foot dish underneath the plane is responsible for
reflecting high-speed data signals from a ground station to your computer.
Fig.2: The Proteus plane that will carry the network hub for the HALO Network
Each city in the HALO Network will be allotted three piloted Proteus planes. Each
plane will fly for eight hours before the next plane takes off. Angel CEO Marc Arnold
says his company has identified 3,500 airports in the United States that can meet
HALO's operational needs. After takeoff, the Proteus plane will climb to a safe
altitude, above any bad weather or commercial traffic, and begin an 8-mile loop
around the city. Each plane will accommodate two pilots, who will split flying duties
during their eight-hour flight.
1.3 REQUIREMENTS
The airborne Internet won't be completely wireless. There will be ground-based
components to any type of airborne Internet network. The consumers will have to
install an antenna on their home or business in order to receive signals from the
network hub overhead. The networks will also work with established Internet Service
Providers (ISPs), who will provide their high-capacity terminals for use by the
network. These ISPs have a fibre point of presence – their fibre optics is already set
up. What the airborne Internet will do is provide an infrastructure that can reach areas
that don't have broadband cables and wires.
1. Angel Technologies
Angel Technologies Corporation, with headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., is a privately-
held wireless communications company using proprietary High Altitude Long
Operation (HALO™) aircraft to deliver services worldwide. Augmenting terrestrial
towers and orbiting satellites, Angel's HALO aircraft will fly fixed patterns in the
stratosphere
above major cities to deliver metropolitan wireless services at lower cost, with
increased flexibility and improved quality of service.
regions. Worldwide regulatory approval for the use of stratospheric platforms was
granted by the ITU in November 1997 and by the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) earlier that year.
1.5 FEATURES
The key features of the Airborne Internet Network are:
Seamless ubiquitous multimedia services.
Adaptation to end user environments.
Enhanced user connectivity globally.
Rapidly deployable to sites of opportunity.
Secure and reliable information transactions.
Bandwidth on demand provides efficient use of available spectrum.
It helps to avoid the connectivity down time of people in transit.
It helps to achieve a broader bandwidth.
It has the potential to provide cost savings for aircrafts operators.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
V.Subha [1] states that Airborne Internet Technology has already begun creating
splashes in the industry. With the advent of Airborne Internet the remote sections of
the world may get into main frame development. However, the technology still has to
undergo testing of potential network performance. Facility to increase the antennas to
control the traffic needs to be provided. Economic feasibility of the project also needs
a review. Thus it is a further new trend in this mobile world which is establishing the
connectivity by building network in the air.
Dr. S. Lokesh [2] has discussed that opportunities may exist for Aerosat to give
another airborne web arrangement that has an economical plan of action. Be that as it
may, promote business examination and specialized exhibition work is required.
Issues to investigate include: extra specialized attainability showings, distinguishing
key client portions required for execution, concluding money related prerequisites for
the business once organize execution is comprehended, understanding the mechanical
points of interest of the present approach, and understanding the possibility to create
principles and suggestion.
Sreesh Gaur [3] airborne internet technology has a wide range of utilities in the field
of aviation services like aircraft monitoring and air traffic management, weather
information etc., and also provides an opportunity for the passengers to access the
internet at very high altitudes that is, in the airplanes and other conventional services.
Thus it is a further new trend in this mobile world which is establishing the
connectivity by building network in the air.
the Shortest Queue (JSQ) principle by defining a new metric, the speed of advance of
a packet. By locally maximizing this metric, every router spreads incoming traffic
among all nodes in the direction of the destination, avoiding excessive queueing delay
at its transmission buffers. The result is an increase in the maximum throughput that
can be sustained by the network, without packets being unnecessarily dropped when
they can be successfully rerouted. The ability to exploit this flexibility depends on the
spatial reuse of the underlying network. For the simulated scenario, an increase in
network throughput of 200% on average has been shown.
3. CASE STUDY
3.1 CASE STUDY
OBJECTIVES
1. Demonstrate that existing IRIG-1061 telemetry hardware can support high-rate
Internet protocol (IP) based bidirectional communications over existing telemetry
(TM) bands
2. Use Advanced Range Telemetry (ARTM) Tier I shaped-offset quadrature phase-
shift keying (SOQPSK2) modulation for double the bandwidth efficiency of PCM/FM
3. Quantify overall system performance
•Data throughput – Conduct file transfer protocol (FTP) file transfers and
transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) throughput
tests.
•Packet loss – Conduct ping tests and transmit UDP packets at various bit rates up to
the TM link rate to measure the packets lost
•Packet round-trip time – Conduct ping tests to measure the round-trip time of
packets of various sizes to within 1 millisecond.
•Repeatability – Evaluate system performance at the same flight conditions multiple
times.
4. Evaluate system performance at 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps TM link rates
SUCCESS CRITERIA
For the purpose of distinguishing between merely transmitting and receiving network
data and demonstrating that the system is a viable option to support future flight test
programs, the following success criteria were defined.
1. Distance: Demonstrate an operational bidirectional link to a range of at least 150
miles
2. Throughput: Achieve at least 4.5 Mbps data throughput at or beyond the distance
criteria.
EXPERIMENT IMPLEMENTATION
FLIGHT SUMMARIES
Seven flights were conducted over 18.7 hours of flight time. A description of each
flight configuration and results is presented below.
Flight 1 (09/21/05): The SOQPSK transmitter was used for downlink. Ground
preflight tests measured the system operating at full performance (approaching 5-
Mbps throughput). Data dropouts and inversions were noted while the airplane was
taxiing and were not eliminated when the airplane became airborne. Data inversions
were corrected manually through the demodulator at the ATF. The data inversions led
to low throughput measurements, aborted tests, and high packet losses.
Flight 2 (09/22/05): The SOQPSK demodulator at the ATF was suspected as having
contributed to the data dropouts and inversions experienced during Flight 1. The
demodulator was replaced before Flight 2; however, there was no measured
improvement.
Flight 3 (09/28/05): Because the data dropouts and inversions appeared
predominantly in the downlink, the SOQPSK transmitter was replaced with an L-band
PCM/FM transmitter and premodulation filter. This reconfiguration eliminated the
data inversions, but the throughput still suffered substantially. During Flight 3, it was
noted that the throughput increased with decreasing range, as shown in Figure 2. It
was also noted that within a range of 35 miles, throughput approached the 5-Mbps
limit.
Flight 4 (09/29/05): In order to characterize the system, the testing range for Flight 4
was restricted to 35 miles from the ATF. By testing within this limited range, the
system throughput was greater than 4.5 Mbps and had few lost packets. It was also
noted during Flight 4 that the deviation of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum was
SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Data throughput
The FTP throughput is shown for each flight in Figure 5. The downlink problem is
clearly visible on Flights 1 through 3, and because FTP uses the TCP protocol and
requires some bi-directional communication, the downlink problem also resulted in
poor FTP uplink performance. The throughput measurements above 4.5 Mbps in
Flight 3 occurred within the 35 mile range as did all of the Flight 4 measurements.
Although the downlink problem remained during Flight 5, some throughput
measurements were high and corresponded to small file transfers of between 1
Megabyte (MB) and 37.5 MB for diagnostic purposes. Larger file transfers of
between 37.5 MB and 375 MB were used on all other flights. Flights 6 and 7 were the
first flights to fully meet the success criteria. Downlink throughput was much
increased during Flight 7 by utilizing SOQPSK modulation at 10 Mbps.
Figure 6 shows the throughput for each flight as measured by Iperf4, a network
performance testing tool. Iperf enables the evaluation of both TCP and UDP
transmissions. Both TCP and UDP downlink throughput suffered on Flights 1 and 2.
The high throughput on Flights 3 and 4 is attributed to all Iperf tests being conducted
within the 35 mile range. One Iperf test was conducted on Flight 5; the majority of
that flight used large FTP transfers for troubleshooting. UDP downlink throughput
approached the bandwidth of 10 Mbps and was measured at a maximum of 9.4 Mbps
during Flight 7.
Packet loss
Two methods were used to measure packet loss: ping tests which required the round
trip of packets, and Iperf UDP tests which required only a one way trip of packets.
Ping tests occurred at a 1 Hz rate and utilized packets from 32 bytes to 10240 bytes.
Iperf tests occurred at the TM link rate and utilized packets from 8000 bytes to 32000
bytes. Because the larger packets were more susceptible to loss from a single bit error,
Iperf packet loss results are generally higher.
The percentage of pings lost is shown for each flight, as well as the baseline ground
test, in Figure 7. No pings were lost during the baseline. Ping tests were conducted
only within the 35 mile range for Flights 3 and 4. It was not until Flights 6 and 7 that
the system matched the baseline ground performance at a range of up to 160 miles.
Figure 8 shows Iperf-measured UDP packet losses for each flight. It is important to
note that a single bit error will cause an entire packet to be discarded. If packet size is
large and bit errors are randomly located in the data, a low bit error rate (BER) can
cause a high packet loss. For example, in Flight 7 three packets were lost out of a total
of 157, which is a 2 percent packet loss. This relatively high packet loss, however,
could be caused by a bit error rate (BER) as low as 7.3E-8, still assuming that a single
bit error caused a packet loss. Implementing forward error correction (FEC)
algorithms could be beneficial for use in applications in which data retransmission is
impossible and data loss is unacceptable.
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CASE STUDY
Routing the Airborne Internet:
Network Model
The multihop wireless network is composed of N identical nodes utilizing half‐duplex
transceivers on the same carrier frequency (common channel). Any one particular
node in the network is uniquely identified by its number i∈{1, ..., N}. Direct
communication from node i to node j is represented by the directed link (i,j), ij. A link
(i,j) exists if a sufficiently low bit error rate (BER) can be achieved in the absence of
multiple access interference. All nodes are assumed to be synchronized to a common
time reference, e.g., by means of GPS. Interference is avoided by scheduling channel
access in a TDMA fashion. Time is divided into repeating frames of size T time slots.
Transmissions start and end within slots. A TDMA schedule describes a node’s
transmission rights for each time slot in the frame.
APPLICATIONS:
Since the Airborne Internet provides broad band services, it increases the
speed of downloading & uploading of data through it.
A primary application for A.I. is to track aircraft for the air traffic control
system. Aircraft pilots would let the traffic controllers know where they are
through the network. The network would give the crew information that would
help them avoid collisions. It would also allow information to be sent from
aircraft to aircraft without having to go through ground facilities. The system
could also be used to send safety warnings to aircraft.
It has the potential to provide significant cost savings for aircrafts operators
and the FAA, as it allows the consolidation of many functions into a common
data channel. Numerous applications can use the same data channel
Using XML aviation services, aircraft operators could receive automatic
updates of weather, landing conditions at the destination airport, turbulence
ahead, and other information. Airborne Internet could be the means by which
the aviation industry will realize these benefits by providing XML services
capability to aircraft.
ADVANTAGES:
The airborne Internet will function much like satellite-based Internet access,
but without the time delay. Bandwidth of satellite and airborne Internet access
are typically the same, but it will take less time for the airborne Internet to
relay data because it is not as high up. Satellites orbit at several hundreds of
miles above Earth. The airborne-Internet aircraft will circle overhead at an
altitude of 52,000 to 69,000 feet (15,849 to 21,031 meters). At this altitude,
the aircraft will be undisturbed by inclement weather and flying well above
commercial air traffic.
Networks using high-altitude aircraft will also have a cost advantage over
satellites because the aircraft can be deployed easily as they don't have to be
launched into space. However, the airborne Internet will actually be used to
compliment the satellite and ground-based networks, not replace them.
4. CONCLUSION
5. REFERENCES
1. Internet In The Sky: The Emerging Trend In The Aviation & Mobile
Transportation ,Deepshikha Varshney, , Sreesh Gaur , Arun Agarwal , Sachin
Agrawal Computer Sc. & Engg. Deptt., J. P. Institute of Engineering & Technology,
Meerut. IJESR/March 2013/ Volume-3/Issue-3/Article No-7/2627-2637 Pg no:2632
4. Ahn, S.; Kim, Y.; Lim, Y. & Lee, J. (2005). Load Balancing in MANET with
Multiple Internet Gateways, IETF Internet Draft, draft-ahn-manet-multigateway-00,
October 2005.
7. Medina, D.; Hoffmann, F.; Ayaz, S. & Rokitansky, C.-H. (2008b). Topology
Characterization of High Density Airspace Aeronautical Ad Hoc Networks,
Proceedings of IEEE MASS 2008, Atlanta, GA, USA, September 2008.